


What The Heart Truly Desires

by Val_Creative



Series: Warlock & His Dollophead [24]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canon Era, Episode Related, M/M, Pining Merlin, Romantic Friendship, Spells & Enchantments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 09:59:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1684286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/pseuds/Val_Creative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The enchantment on Arthur to hopelessly adore the Lady Vivian can’t be broken by just anyone. These love potions are strange things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What The Heart Truly Desires

**Author's Note:**

> (A very special thank you to my friends on Skype who encouraged this on, even when I was whining, and The Merlin Family as well as The Warlock and His King Network on Tumblr for being a wonderfully excitable bunch ❤ ❤ ❤ )
> 
>  
> 
> Day #24: "shy"

*

 

_These love potions are strange things._

Merlin groaned, thudding his forearms to the workshop table. By midday, King Olaf would battle Arthur to the death. The malevolent enchantment over Vivian and Arthur held strong.

"… Are you sure we didn't miss something?"

Gaius peered studiously though his hand-held magnifying glass, making a distracted noise.

"Oh," he said, finger pausing over his grimoire.

" _Oh_?"

Merlin's head jerked up. He rose to his feet, nearly twitching with anticipation.

"Is that ' _oh_ , Arthur's saved' or ' _oh_ , that old knee's acting up'?" Merlin asked, over Gaius's shoulder. He tilted his head down at the cramped, undecipherable passage.

The stern, pointed look from Gaius went unacknowledged.

He said, dryly, "Enchantments such as these require a magic stronger than the potion—"

"Yes, and we tried that. My magic did nothing!"

"—it _also_ requires a truer love to be summoned." Gaius's finger smoothed over the text as he recited, and the more he did—the more Merlin felt his own dread grow tight like a knot inside him. "Shown in a deep, abiding gesture and consenting from both the enchanted person and… _you_ , Merlin."

"Except there's one problem," Merlin said, his expression frantic. "There's no _love_ to be summoned. Arthur doesn't feel that way!"

Gaius raised an eyebrow.

"Are you so sure?" he asked, eerily contemplative.

Merlin let out a rumbling, frustrated growl, wiping his hands over his face. Sliding them down to his jaw. Of _course_ Gaius knew about that.

"I'm… I'm over that, Gaius. I know who his heart really desires," he admitted, unsmiling. "Gwen should be the one doing this instead of me. She's his truest love."

"Except if it doesn't work, Arthur fights in the tourney."

Merlin nodded, the knot in him tightening further.

"I'll do what I have to do to protect him," he said, grimly.

 

*

 

He found Arthur confined to his bedchambers, knee hitched up on the sill, glancing out the window.

"Sire?" Merlin resisted the instinct to defuse anything awkward between them with joke. "Sire, you haven't eaten anything."

He picked up the full platter of Arthur's lunch, hearing a low whine.

"How can I?" Arthur said, mournfully. A palm resting upon his sun-golden cheek. "My lady love and I are parted."

With his back turned, cleaning up the dining table, Merlin eye-shrugged at no one. Trying to sound patient.

"I'm sure it's for the best," he muttered.

Arthur slammed a fist against the marbled stone wall, face twisting up.

"You don't _understand_ , Merlin. You _can't_ understand what it's like to love someone you can never be with."

Mouth set into a determined line, the other man revealed nothing in his posture. Merlin continued his task, picking up Arthur's blunted sword and the tatter of belt.

"You'd be surprised," he muttered a little less loudly. "Astonished, even."

Arthur sighed dreamily, getting up from the window.

"She's the warmth of my heart's content. She's my light. My delicate flower."

Merlin allowed himself a moment to poke out his tongue in exaggerated disgust before turning back around, blinking, straight-faced.

"My other half," Arthur told him, earnestly. Something fragile inside Merlin crumbled up into ashes. "My _destiny_."

"No," Merlin said, quietly.

He strode over, frowning at Merlin. "What did you just say?"

Merlin rasped out, feeling like the air thinned in his lungs, "No, that's… it's all wrong."

"You're talking _nonsense_."

"The Lady Vivian isn't who you think."

Arthur folded his arms, beginning to glare in semi-confusion.

"Then who is she, _Mer_ lin?" he asked, dangerously low. Merlin flinched back a moment .

Arthur was trapped in the enchantment, thinking Vivian was the epitome of _perfection_. He didn't know what he was doing or saying, Merlin thought. Not entirely.

"Just… a person," Merlin said warily, his eyes lowered before he gained the courage to glare _back_ into Arthur's eyes. "Your _destiny_ means so much more, Arthur. We're meant to build the greatest kingdom in all the lands. We're meant to build Albion _together_." At another disgruntled, unmoved look, Merlin slide his teeth over his lower lip.

Okay.

Merlin rucked up his claret tunic, exhibiting his tummy and the dark path of hair leading up to his navel. He bunched the roughly-woven fabric into his hands and pulled it over his head, just in time to witness Arthur's mouth drop open. "I guess I'll have to explain it the complicated way," he said with some finality.

"What are you think you are DOING?"

"Snapping you out of this enchantment." Merlin tugged off his boots, going for the rope holding up his trousers. "What do you think I'm doing?"

Arthur said, offended, "I am not _enchanted_!"

"You are, and I'm going to break this," he insisted, only stopping from removing the rest of his clothes as Arthur's hands grabbed his. "But it has to be with you. You have to want this. "

Arthur's blue eyes squinted closely as Merlin, as if he were a fascinating, albeit annoying, specimen.

"… Is this your pathetic attempt at _seducing_ me?"

"Forgot the flowers, yeh," he said, sarcastically.

Arthur's fingers clenched round his, still hovering in front of Merlin's trousers.

"Why would I _ever_ take your virtue?"

"You wouldn't," Merlin replied, honestly. "There's not much of it left." He grinned at the flash of arousal in summer-blue eyes. "I'm not exactly _untouched_."

He felt that wave of foreign, weaker magic simmering, coming from Arthur. His own magic _pushed_ against it, forcing it away.

One of Arthur's hands snatched Merlin's jaw, holding him there.

"Who… was it?"

There wasn't _danger_ in Arthur's voice so much as there was a blaze of unidentifiable heat.

"Does it matter?" Merlin kept on grinning, letting it soften in knowing. "She was from Ealdor. We spent the long winters together."

He remembered her, a girl with farm-browned arms and a speckled complexion. Bright curls of orange hair. He remembered huddling naked in lone candlelight, feeling her arse rub against him under wool blankets. Her breasts pressing to him, solid and fleshy warmth.

She had whimpered, lips bitten raw when Merlin sank between her legs, her little, wet cunt squeezing around him hard enough to roll his eyes back. He remembered fingers clenching her breast, even as Merlin jolted her hips up from the cot in delirious rhythm, feeling every inch of her. He had been completely lost to it until they settled, wrapped together. His cooling seed trickling out, slicking Merlin's hand as he fingered her lazily, petting, her thighs hugging his wrist.

Arthur brought him from the memory, smashing their mouths, colliding noses painfully. Grunting, Merlin seized onto Arthur's head with both hands, pulling him in tighter. Their lips and teeth _ached_ , bruising from the pressure, from trying to consume each other. Merlin was about to lick in, map out each ridge of Arthur's palate when the other man heaved a gasp.

The foreign magic seemed to hum deafeningly in Arthur, before diminishing into a background vibration.

Arthur's eyes stared right at Merlin, but didn't _see_ Merlin.

"I… Vivian…?" he murmured, bemused.

" _Merlin_. It's us. It was always us." Merlin smiled, widely. He placed Arthur's hands to his bare torso. "I'm going to be with you, protecting you for as long as I live."

But Arthur didn't seem to comprehend.

His lips rounded out.

"Guinevere," he breathed out. Merlin's smile fell, his heart turning into the same, cursed knot. "I love…"

Merlin stepped away, exhaling sharply, hands trembling on his forehead.

 _Gods damn everything_ —he really was an idiot.

Arthur shook his head, eyes getting big with realization.

"Hells, what was I _thinking_?" he asked.

"Dunno," Merlin said, blandly. Grateful he sounded like everything was _ordinary_ when Merlin just made a right fool of himself. His nauseous stomach eating its own walls. He bent down to pick up his tunic, avoiding looking behind him at his truest—and least likely to feel as he did— _love_. "It worked, at least. You're back to yourself."

He wiped at his runny nose, ignoring the horrible sting in his eyes.

"Merlin?"

"If I say anything, you'll have me dropped in a vat of hot oil. I got it." Merlin faked a laugh, sniffling. "But now King Olaf will have to find another person to—"

He stiffened up, flinching in Arthur's grasp.

"You meant everything you said?" Arthur whispered, gaze steady, "Merlin, tell me."

Merlin's eyelashes heavy with dampness.

"All of it," he whispered back. _I'm not yours_.

There it was again: Arthur's kiss. Without possessive, fierce nature, without harshness and the pain resulted of desperation. Arthur held onto him like he was cherished, like Merlin _deserved_ this. Deserved happiness. A hiccuping sob escaped Merlin's lips, another few tears slipping down his cheeks.

"Don't, Merlin," Arthur said, murmury. He gently pushed them away, caressing over Merlin's reddened face.

This isn't how Merlin wanted him. Not out of pity.

But Merlin still licked past the rim of Arthur's pliant lips, feeling Arthur's hands undo the rope to his trousers, lost to it—lost to where he ended up on Arthur's bed, thrusting into the hot seal of Arthur's mouth. Merlin gripped Arthur's hair, legs cradling the sides of Arthur's head. " _Ar_ thur," he moaned out, saliva-wet cock thudding onto his abdomen.

He tasted Arthur's mouth, tasted his own cock on Arthur's tongue. Merlin shied away, turning his head and gasping. Arthur nosed down his throat.

"Mm," he grunted, as if pleased.

The nexus of Merlin's sorcery rose up, clashing against the weakened foreign magic. He pushed once, finding it brittle.

" _Út_ ," Merlin commanded, under his breath. Irises burning gold.

Relief flushed through him as Arthur went limp against him, dozing in slumber.

Merlin went limp into the bed with him, gripping on, fingering Arthur's hair. He needed—some time to think.

 _Love was a strange thing_.

 

*


End file.
